Amid relentless criticism from former President Trump that she is responsible for unchecked illegal immigration, Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday made her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since 2021, announcing stricter measures than She would take as president to restrict entry at the border.
“The United States is a sovereign nation and I believe we have a duty to establish rules at our border and enforce them,” Harris told a crowd gathered in Douglas, Ariz., in a small auditorium at the Douglas campus of Cochise College. where the stage was flanked by large signs reading “Border Security and Stability.” “We are also a nation of immigrants. The United States has been enriched by generations of people who came from all corners of the world to contribute to our country and be part of the American story.
Harris said she would go beyond Biden administration policies to further restrict border access outside of official ports of entry.
Earlier in the afternoon, Harris visited a port of entry less than 10 miles from the campaign event. Two Border Patrol agents walked her along the imposing fence built under the Obama administration. Harris later told reporters she thanked them for their work.
“Their job is difficult and they rightly need support to do their job. They are very dedicated,” she said. “So I’m here to talk with them about what we can continue to do to support them.”
She advocated for hiring more agents and adding more fentanyl detection systems at border points of entry.
“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose between securing our border or creating a safe, orderly and humane immigration system,” Harris said. “We can and must do both.”
Immigration reform has tormented presidents of both parties for decades.
A bipartisan proposal earlier this year, combining increased funding for border security and foreign aid to Ukraine, appeared to be the first step forward until it was derailed when Trump urged Republicans to oppose it .
Kamala Harris speaks Friday on the Douglas campus of Cochise College in Douglas, Arizona.
(Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)
This deal falls short of comprehensive plans discussed for decades that would revamp the asylum system and legal immigration process and provide a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people in the country without legal authorization, including those arriving as children. Harris on Friday mentioned farmworkers and immigrants who arrived as children, known as “Dreamers.”
“As president, I will put politics aside to fix our immigration system and find solutions to problems that have persisted for too long,” Harris said.
Before Harris’ visit to the border, Trump highlighted reports that more than 425,000 convicted felons are in the country illegally but not in federal custody, according to data provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in response to a legislator’s request. .
That includes more than 13,000 people convicted of homicide and more than 15,800 people convicted of sexual assault, according to ICE data shared on X, formerly Twitter, by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas).
Trump said Thursday that 21 million people had entered the country illegally in the last four years alone. He called the bipartisan effort he helped defeat “his atrocious border bill.”
“This was not a border bill. It was an amnesty bill…,” he said at a press conference in Manhattan. “Luckily, Congress was too smart for that.”
The bill would not have opened a path to citizenship for people without legal status.
The Republican candidate’s appearance at Trump Tower is reminiscent of his 2015 campaign announcement, including his references to other countries deliberately sending criminals to the United States.
Her remarks contained multiple falsehoods, such as saying that Harris had approved a series of changes to the country’s immigration policies that she had no control over as vice president, and that she was the “border czar » from the Biden administration. She had been accused of trying to improve conditions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in order to prevent people from those countries from fleeing their home countries.
The mission has been a political headache for Harris – drawing criticism from both the left and the right.
During a visit to Central America in 2021, Harris told would-be migrants they would be deported if they crossed the border, angering allies of immigrants who said they were fleeing poverty, corruption and violence.
“Don’t come,” she said at the time. “You will be turned away.”
During the same trip, Harris scoffed at questions during a nationally televised interview about why she had not yet visited the border as vice president, inflaming critics right.
Both political parties are hyper-focused on immigration because, even though the presidential race is very close in the polls, Trump has a double-digit advantage on the issue of border security. That advantage has narrowed, however, since President Biden decided not to run again and Harris gained the support needed to become the Democratic presidential nominee.
Border controls hit a record in December, with nearly 250,000 arrests by agents. As the political issue raged, Biden signed an order in June to sharply restrict asylum applications, leading to sharp declines in border encounters to fewer than 60,000 in July and August.
Republicans pressed the issue, with GOP members of Congress introducing a resolution that “strongly condemns the failure of the Biden administration and its border czar, Kamala Harris, to secure the U.S. border” a day later that the president announced that he would not run again.
Although some claims by the former president and his allies are blatantly false and have been denounced by Republican elected officials, such as allegations that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, the concerns of some voters on the impact of an unsecured border on the country The economy, crime and fentanyl crisis are palpable in many communities.
Friday’s visit was Harris’ second to Arizona since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, according to the Harris-Walz campaign. While Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and others have toured this southwest battleground state, Harris has focused much of her in-person campaigning in critical states further afield. is, like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.
Hours before the vice president’s arrival in Arizona, Republicans held a news conference featuring two mothers whose daughters were raped and killed by immigrants who were in the country illegally and the mother of a teenage son victim of fentanyl overdose. The women blasted Harris for the administration’s immigration policies and for visiting the border so close to the election.
“I’m trying very hard not to cry. We live 1,800 miles from the border,” said Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, a mother of five who was brutally attacked while walking a bucolic, busy public trail in Maryland. His body was discovered in a pipe.
“No one is safe in America, no one is safe. If you have a sanctuary city in your state, you’re not safe,” she said. “They bused illegal immigrants, flew them, and trained them in literally every nook and cranny and every small town across the entire United States. »
Such fears are one reason the Harris campaign released an immigration ad in Arizona on Friday and visited the southern border less than a month and a half before Election Day. As vice president, she has already visited the region once in 2021, when she visited the El Paso port of entry and border operations.
Mehta reported from Phoenix and Pinho from Douglas. Times writers Noah Bierman and Andrea Castillo contributed to this report from Washington, DC.
